Tag: AllofMP3.Com

Visa Disconnects AllofMP3.Com

After years of trying to get it shut down outright, the music industry seems to have scored a minor victory with Visa’s decision to suspend service to Russian music site AllofMP3.com. VISA International spokesman Simon Barker told CNET,

It’s [AllofMP3.Com] no longer permitted to accept Visa cards. The action we’ve taken is in line with legislation passed in Russia and international copyright law.

AllofMP3 countered that Visa International’s decision was “arbitrary, capricious and discriminatory.” Moreover, AllofMP3 continues to maintain that its business practices are completely legal in Russia, where it sells MP3s without the permission of copyright holders and pays a pittance in royalties to a Russian rights agency.

Since there are dozens of ways to download the exact same content, even if the Visa change is permanent, its at best a pyrrhic victory for the RIAA. Wow, I can’t buy music at AllofMP3 anymore — I guess I’ll have to go back to downloading it for free.

Sources:

Blacklisted AllofMP3 slams ‘capricious’ Visa and Mastercard. Drew Cullen, The Register, October 19, 2006.

Visa halts its service for allofmp3.com. Greg Sandovel, CNET News.Com, October 18, 2006.

AllofMP3.Com

At the same time that the record industry is trying to raise the cost of iTunes music, AllofMP3.Com continues to make semi-legal music buying a cinch with the release of its slick AllTunes.

AllofMP3.Com is a Russian site that has a quasi-legal status even in Russia — Russian authorities in the past have threatened to crack down on the business, but for now it seems to stay ahead of authorities thanks to some loopholes in Russian copyright law.

Essentially, AllofMP3.Com offers high quality downloads of the latest music without DRM and very cheaply ($2-$3/album for 336kbs MP3s — cheaper for lower quality). It then pays money to a Russian licensing bureau which the RIAA and other major recording organizations don’t recognize, so none of the money from the sales is actually making its way back to labels or artists, in case you care about such things.

It may take a lot longer for the rest of the world to catch up with Russia, but AllofMP3.Com represents the inevitable future where music is commoditized. Frankly, the site is a bit like crack for music fans since the low prices mean you’re likely to end up spending far more on AllofMP3.Com than on iTunes precisely because the prices are so low. At $2/album, why not buy a couple hundred albums?

The major criticism leveled at AllofMP3.Com is its exploitation of loose Russian copyright laws. In this it is very similar to one of the world’s other copyright renegades — the United States in the 19th century. The RIAA and others who complain about the site’s continued success have predecessors in Charles Dickens and other successful British authors who saw their works pirated in the United States where lax copyright laws didn’t grant foreign authors any rights to control the publication of their works (i.e., they were ripped of by American printers who didn’t bother to pay them royalties — a policy which the United States government promoted by high tariffs on imported books).

If music companies can try to get the U.S. legislature to make it legal to hack and/or destroy computers that may be engaged in file sharing, I’m not sure why music lovers shouldn’t enjoy the fruits of Russia’s equally odd copyright laws.